1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to the field of communication over bandwidth-constrained networks.
2. Background
Full-Band Capture (FBC) digital tuning is a downstream RF technology that converts an entire downstream analog signal to a digital signal, which allows client devices to simultaneously access the entire downstream digital signal. Client devices, as a result, can take advantage of applications with asymmetric bandwidth requirements such as, for example, music downloads, video-on-demand, and Internet Protocol (IP) television. FBC digital tuning can be implemented in various communication networks, including those with asymmetric communication protocols (e.g., downstream communication bandwidth differs from upstream communication bandwidth) such as, for example, Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) and Digital Subscriber Line (DSL).
By itself, FBC does not completely remove the bottleneck in the upstream bandwidth that exists in the DOCSIS system today and in the near future. Therefore, for real-time applications (e.g. video conferencing and VoIP) that have symmetric bandwidth requirements for both downstream and upstream, the bandwidth-related benefits of the FBC technology may not be fully utilized without additional techniques to work-around the upstream bottleneck in the FBC environment.
Further, for applications that have multiple local client devices in communication with multiple remote client devices over a communication network, FBC digital tuning may provide sufficient bandwidth to support the high-density communication in the downstream direction (e.g., communication from the multiple remote client devices to the multiple local client devices). However, communication in the upstream direction (e.g., communication from the multiple local client devices to the multiple remote client devices) may be a bottleneck in the high-density communication. This may result in a poor quality communication signal (e.g., in sound and video quality) between the local client devices and remote client devices.
Therefore, there is a need to adapt communication applications to bandwidth-constrained networks.